Moore Public Schools' STEP Program

KOSU | By Sierra Pfeifer

Published February 17, 2025

 

Whenever Evan got in trouble at school, he knew what to expect — he’d be sent home. A few days, sometimes weeks, removed from classes and left to navigate online assignments on his own. Every time, it felt like a step further away from graduating.

KOSU is only using Evan’s first name in this story as he’s a minor discussing school discipline.

“It wasn’t working to just suspend me and send me home because, I mean, I would come back with failing grades,” he said. “I wasn’t doing nothing.”

By the time he reached his freshman year at Westmoore High School, that cycle had escalated. A 45-day suspension loomed, and Evan braced for more of the same – isolation, slipping grades and the growing sense that school might not be for him.

But last fall, Moore Public Schools tried something different. Instead of being sent home, Evan was part of the first group of students sent to the district’s new Suspension Transition and Education Program, or STEP.

STEP principal Jerry Broadbent said he still has a picture of the program’s first cohort on his phone. Now, almost 180 students have been sent to STEP.

“That group, two years ago, we're sending them home, pass rate was right around 50%,” Broadbent said. “The kids came through our program last year, the pass rate was at 80% for the semester.”

An alternative to suspension

STEP accepts 7th through 10th graders across the district who have been suspended for the same amount of time as Evan, pooling students from three high schools, six junior high schools and an alternative school, VISTA Academy.

Instead of being sent home, STEP brings suspended students together in a structured environment with strict rules, academic support and therapy. Located in an industrial metal building in central Moore that has been converted into the district’s hub for night school and alternative learning programs, STEP is a stark difference from what normal suspension looks like.

But it’s a change students like Evan acknowledge they need.

“Honestly, now that I look back at it, it wasn’t working. Like, just sending me home was not working. I wasn’t doing none of my work,” Evan said. “I was getting grounded but I was still doing whatever I wanted because I just wasn’t listening to nobody.”

Long-term suspensions can have substantial negative effects on students, starting them on a path to the juvenile justice system. Suspended and expelled children are often left unsupervised and without constructive activities and can easily fall behind in their coursework, leading to a greater likelihood of disengagement and dropouts. According to the ACLU, all of these factors increase a student’s likelihood of court involvement.

The isolation that comes with being sent home, especially to an unhealthy environment, and the embarrassment of a public punishment can also negatively impact a student’s mental health.

But without other options, many schools still turn to suspension as a form of discipline. In the 2020-21 school year, Moore Public Schools suspended more students than the national and state averages.

Broadbent said Moore realized it could use those suspensions to target a group that needs extra support, especially because a majority of the students who come to STEP got in trouble for drug possession.

“If you got kids who are gonna be suspended, you’ve got a little bit of a captive audience and that’s a great time you can hit them with those short-term interventions,” he said.

Broadbent said the district started STEP because research recommends early interventions for students struggling with substance abuse and part of the program’s funds come from opioid abatement grants from the state.

Suspension also disproportionately affects minority students, who are more likely to receive punishment than their white counterparts. In Moore during the 2020-21 school year, 7.76% of American Indian or Alaska Native students and 8.21% of Black or African American students have one or more out-of-school suspensions. Meanwhile, only 3.02% of white students have one or more out-of-school suspensions.

Integrated support 

Students at STEP take classes, spend all day without access to their phones and are under complete adult supervision. Broadbent said these measures keep students safe and on track.

STEP is still a consequence for students who get in trouble, but with integrated support and a team of adults who want “nothing better than [their] success,” he said.

One of those adults is Summer King – a licensed therapist working on-site at STEP.

King’s office is bright blue, decorated with colorful signs and filled with fidget toys and trinkets. She said she designed it with students and their comfort in mind because she knows how scary it can feel to trust someone with your feelings.

Before coming to STEP, Evan said he spent most of his life avoiding conversations about his emotions. Family members and teachers had suggested he seek out therapy or counseling during his freshman year “because of a lot of the things that were happening in his life,” but he was resistant to the idea.

King said even students like Evan, who may be hesitant to get support, can end up leaning into the therapy portion of STEP.

“It helped me learn how to talk about my problems with my aunt when I feel like she’s making me mad or whatever, or when I’m having a tough time in class, I talk to the teacher, ‘can I step out?’” Evan said. “And then for my social skills, man.”

Brandy Gomez, the mother of a different student sent to STEP at the same time as Evan, said the “warmth, care and dedication” educators showed her son was beyond anything she’d ever seen, especially for suspended students.

“I’ve never seen a program like this before, I mean, it’s amazing though because I’ve seen so many students go down the drain just because they got suspended and they just drop out and move on with life,” Gomez said. “They stepped in and tried to help us in one of his hardest times.”

She worries there isn’t time for individualized support in the rush of a normal school day and that teachers don’t have the same capacity for care because they are looking after so many students with different needs at the same time.

She said, after her son finished the program, the two of them even considered finding a low-level way for him to get in trouble again so he could be sent back to STEP.

“These people are the ones who made a difference in his life,” she said.

Broadbent said students who come to STEP have often already been punished at school. And many, if not all, have problems at home or personal struggles that contributed to the behavior they were suspended for.

“Every kid that comes in here,” he said, “they’re carrying some baggage with them.”

Resources to grow

According to King, STEP is about discipline, not punishment.

“If people learned only from the negative potential consequences, none of us would ever get a speeding ticket, none of us would ever have had issues that we regret later in our life,” she said. “This is focusing on their future and all of the things they have left to come.”

She said STEP is not only about filling the time most students spend “waiting out” their 45-day suspensions, but she hopes students leave the program with more resources and confidence.

Broadbent said he designed the program to make transitioning back to school easier than normal suspension. The program includes daily in-person attendance requirements and class materials that more closely mirror what students are missing.

He grew up going to school in Moore and coached football in the district for 27 years, but he says his last year at STEP has been one of the most rewarding during his whole career.

“I love the fact that … we got these crazy political climates, you know, and having care and compassion and caring about kids has no political party,” he said. “Politically, me and Ms. Summer [King] are probably the most diverse people that you could ever find, but we work together so well because the focus is these kids.”

Evan’s time at STEP had a profound effect on him. He said he owes his growth to the program.

“I can’t even tell you where I’d be right now, I’d probably be with a lot of my friends to be honest and they’re not really in good places,” Evan said. “I feel like if it wasn’t for STEP, some of the choices and decisions that I decided not to make, I woulda’ made.”

He said educators at STEP saw him, and students like him, as more than just their mistakes.

“I feel like they all understood us on different levels when other people couldn’t,” Evan said. “I feel like they seen through our anger and our moods and feelings and worked with us until we were feeling better and didn’t let our anger or whatever, like, make them just walk out on us.”